In Starbound, you take on the role of a character who’s just fled from their home planet, only to crash-land on another. From there you’ll embark on a quest to survive, discover, explore and fight your way across an infinite universe!

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Early Access Game

Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.

Note: This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you
should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“We were at a point in Starbound's development where it was already pretty fun, so we decided to release the game in beta through early access to ensure the community has a chance to help us shape the game.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“It's difficult for us to give a solid release date-- we're not so good at those, we've learned. Starbound still has a ways to go, but we'll keep you posted via our website!”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“The full version of Starbound will contain a plot and sidequests, more dungeons, more bosses and lore, among other features.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Starbound is already extremely playable and contains a vast amount of content in its current state! There are two beta branches currently in use-- [STABLE] and [NIGHTLY].

The stable branch receives less frequent updates, as we're currently working on one big update that will complete the first few tiers of player progression.

The [NIGHTLY] branch is updated automatically every night, and is for players who want to track progress or simply can't wait to check out shiny new features. :D Play at your own risk, though, as these builds are not tested and bugs/crashes are likely.

April 27

Hey there, everyone! We've been reading your feedback from last week's stable update, and it seems like most people are really enjoying the new features. We've also seen reports of several minor bugs, so we've pushed out a new update which should address most of these. Thanks to everyone who's given us specific and detailed bug reports; it's a huge help!

Fixes in this update:

Fixed a bug causing clients to be stuck in teleport cinematic if they disconnected from a server while it was playing

Fixed a bug that could prevent players' ships from loading after a failed warp

Fixed missing outpost quest NPC, the arcade game quest is now completable again

Fixed a bug causing ship doors to be removed on upgrades

Fixed a bug locking players out of the end of the Erchius Mining Facility mission if they died after defeating the boss

Fixed a bug preventing the lever puzzle in the Floran Party mission from being completed

Fixed damage areas on ceiling and floor spikes

Fixed custom signs being set to 'on' after saving and loading

Fixed a bug causing the game to crash when entering a bad host name in the server join dialog

Fixed a rare bug in world generation which could prevent terrain from generating

Increased NPC energy regen

Greatly reduced server->client bandwidth for updating player ships

Made additional changes to further improve server stability

Included dump_versioned_json and make_versioned_json utilities for reading and writing various save data formats

Added a /suicide command for characters who are irreversibly stuck

Hopefully these fixes will be helpful to those of you experiencing issues. Let us know in the comments if you find anything new. Enjoy!

April 23

As you may have read in our patch notes, the newest stable update saw the 'home planet' feature replaced by planet bookmarks and direct teleporters. This meant that existing players would have to lose their home planets.

But never fear! Ideally you'd have written down your planet's coordinates, but either way your home planet still exists and is intact and you can find it using the following method. :)

Elite Space Hobo from our community beat us to posting a guide, which you can find here.

Find your universe folder. Typically, it should be located in SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\Starbound\giraffe_storage\universe.

Right click -> sort files by date last modified. If your planet's been heavily customized/built upon, it should be one of the larger files. If you visit it frequently, it should also be one of the most recent.

"What do all these numbers mean?!" World files with names like: 270623995_279217314_-213404188_12.world mean that you've visited a planet with the coordinates X -270623995 Y -279217314.

Put the coordinates into your ship's computer and... hopefully, voila! Planet located! If not, try some of the other planets in your universe folder.

Now that you've found your home planet, don't forget to create a bookmark. :)

Reviews

“Starbound is one of the most impressive never-ending games I've ever played.”
9 – Polygon

“Starbound's delivering on its core promises even in its early access incarnation.”
Eurogamer

“This might be a bare-bones version of the game to come, but boy, check out those bones. The game's minutiae will be mapped out across various wikis for years to come, and many mechanics will be added and refined, but even now, Starbound is an enticing journey of discovery that reminds you just how exciting it can be to stare at a sky full of stars.”
Gamespot

Huge winter update!

The huge winter update is here!

After many months of work the winter update has finally been released. It contains more changes than we can list but below are some of the most obvious updates.

***Universe and Worlds***

Sectors have been removed, so all stars are part of the same map

Star and planet types correspond to difficulty levels, giving players access to progressively more extreme environments as they advance through the game

Added oceanic world types including tropical and arctic oceans, toxic and magma planets

Added rare Barren and Asteroid worlds with no monsters for large scale building

New biomes

New surface and underground mini biomes

Many changes to surface and underground terrain generation

Improvements to background parallaxes and sky coloration

***Ships and Navigation***

Player ships now include an AI avatar specific to each race that gives access to the player’s techs, missions, 3D printer, and a variety of ship-related commands

Each race’s ship has its own unique set of upgrades, giving players much more room to expand as they progress

Fuel costs for travel have been reworked. Moving between planets within a system is now free, while jumps to other systems require fuel in proportion to the distance traveled.

Coal no longer powers spaceships! Instead, they can use either radioactive ores or the new Liquid Erchius Fuel that now appears in Moon biomes

Many improvements to the Cockpit interface, which now indicates more detailed planet information including weather and environmental hazards

***Outpost***

The universe now has a civilized hub containing shops, quests, and other services. This is where players will find quests, missions, and ship upgrades which allow them to advance through the game

Includes a Sign Store based on the popular custom signs mod, where players can design and print their own signage for use in game

***Missions***

At key points in the progression, players will unlock special Missions

Missions take place in unique instanced dungeons containing special monsters, bosses, and rewards not available anywhere else

Some missions can be quite difficult, so you’ll want to prepare carefully - or bring friends!

***Novakids***

New playable race!

Unique progression of craftable guns

Unique progression of armor sets

Unique progression of ship upgrades

***Tech***

Techs are now split into head, body, legs and suit slots, so you can equip up to four at once!

Head techs provide various activated effects triggered using the tech hotkeys

About This Game

In Starbound, you take on the role of a character who’s just fled from their home planet, only to crash-land on another. From there you’ll embark on a quest to survive, discover, explore and fight your way across an infinite universe.

You’ll encounter procedurally generated creatures and weapons, discover populated villages and abandoned temples. Explore planets dotted with dungeons, eyeball trees and treasure. Make use of over a hundred materials and over one thousand in-game objects to build a sprawling modern metropolis or a sleepy secluded cabin in the woods, and do all of it alone or with friends!

Starbound lets you live out your own story of space exploration, discovery and adventure. Settle down and farm the land, hop from planet to planet claiming resources, or make regular visits to populated settlements, taking on jobs and earning a living. NPCs are scattered about the worlds, offering quests and challenges for those looking for a little extra excitement in their lives.

When this game was in Early Access, i was single.When this game was in Early Access, i was unemployed.When this game was in Early Access, my garden was arid.When this game was in Early Access, my best friend had no plans to become father.When this game was in Early Access, noone could even presume how Pluto surface could look like.

I have been promoted 2 times on my stable job.My girlfriend is lovely and i wonder how she still loves me after all this time together.My lemon trees are strong now, and their fruits are juicy!Sometimes i go visiting my best friend, and i find extermely funny to play with his 2 daugthers.Today i stared in awe looking at the incredibly 3,500 meter tall mountains of ice on the surface of Pluto, puzzling myself about the complete lack of planetary collision with meteors of any kind. And this game is still Early Access.

It's very good, a lot of planets to explore and a lot of customisation however..

There is nothing to actually do, as in there is no purpose. Nearly all the items in the game are simply decorative sprites and since you have to visit other worlds to mine rarer resources there is no real reason to build a base anywhere with them.

So while you might think "Hey I want to build a huge space fortress" you quickly realise that it will serve no purpose and you will end up abandoning it as you travel further into space.

132 hours on record.. far more than any other game in my steam library. and yet, i can't recommend it. it's kinda like terraria without the soul. i don't understand it myself. as others have said, on paper this should be a terraria killer, or at the very least on par with it's older cousin, but it just isn't. i bought this in 2013 and it's STILL not finished? it also seems like not much as changed, as least not for the better. even for $15, i'd pass on this until it's "officially" released.

Such a long time with so little updated. Early access forever, ect... I tried it again after a year because of the supposed big update that happened and found other than some new boss arena gauntlet things it was mostly unchanged. There was hope for this game at one point but that time has long past, drowned out by the cries of "b-b-but it's beta!"

And that's on top of a dev team that will ban you from their official forums for not following the groupthink of that this game is a miracle from the heavens.

I fear Starbound will turn out less like Disneyland, which is a functional masterpiece that will never be finished but constantly improved, and more like the Winchester House, constructed haphazardly and proceeding aimlessly without direction until its owner's death. The game has a more than decent framework, but the developers keep changing the game's premise, leading to a circuitous lack of progress and wasted potential.

It's gone from a Terraria-like 2d space exploration game with procedural worlds and craftable bosses, to a story-driven series of instance dungeons, all the while killing off promising older content while adding more and more unfinished (and/or unnecessary) features. This slash-and-burn development has left the game unfocused, long after the point where it should have been crystallizing. The initial hype has died down, releases are fewer and longer between, and content is stagnant for months at a time, leaving players wondering if there's any motivation or momentum left to see it completed.

The playstarbound website seems to feature lots of regular updates, but most of it seems to be showing off graphical blandishment and experimental features, few if any of which have rolled down to gameplay or promise to offer much in the way of functional content. In their eagerness to demonstrate that they are still actively working on the game, they're offering a lot of gravy and not much meat.

Players will quickly burn through all the existing gameplay content and acquire all the useful craftable equipment, leaving you with nothing to do but wander randomly generated worlds in search of treasure chests. Judging from the comments here and at other sites, many players have walked away due to the lack of content, and with them goes word-of-mouth support. After all, what good is an increasingly graphically refined game world if there's nothing new to do in it?